Drew Ivers, the chairman of Iowa's delegation at the Republican National Convention, announces that Ron Paul receives 22 of Iowa's 28 votes and Mitt Romney gets the other 6 votes. / ASSOCIATED PRESS

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The barricades are down and the confetti is being swept up in Tampa, and now it’s Charlotte’s turn for the hoopla and headaches that come with a national political convention.

Over the next few days, the talking heads will be speculating and spinning about whether Mitt Romney and the Republicans got a bump out of the convention or merely a bounce. We’ll hear lots of opinions about whether Democrats are more or less enthusiastic about Barack Obama and whether he’ll put on a better show for the TV cameras.

Was Clint Eastwood a hurricane-force success or a topical depression? Will Joe Biden be required to lip-synch his remarks to avoid activating the gaffe track? Will anyone really care come Election Day?

The last question is the one I’m pondering as I unpack my unused storm gear from Tampa and repack anything that passes a sniff test. Sorry, Charlotte.

Conventional wisdom is that these quadrennial party productions have lost much of their punch. They are scripted (except for Clint), pre-ordained and not particularly entertaining to watch. This year, the big three networks had already passed on covering the first night of the GOP convention before Hurricane Isaac prompted a schedule compression. The remaining nights competed with the season opener of college football, not to mention Isaac’s damage in Louisiana.

Conventions in the past have had significant and lasting effects on candidates’ poll numbers, according to Nate Silver and other polling experts. I don’t pretend to know what will happen this year, but I’d be surprised if either candidate sees more than a blip in his poll numbers.

That doesn’t mean conventions aren’t meaningful, however. Conventions show voters the image the candidates want to project of themselves and their campaign message. It’s sort of like a 30-second ad blown up into a three-night miniseries. The other side does its best to respond, but it’s like trying to whistle a Barry Manilow tune during a Megadeth concert.

Voters who watched the Republican National Convention saw Mitt Romney the family man, the hard-working business executive, the decent, church-going volunteer. What kind of church it is doesn’t matter that much, according to Mike Huckabee. They saw Romney as the kind of guy who shows up to console a young mother with a sick baby and helps her do her laundry. The cold-hearted, slightly dorky, elitist millionaire of the Democrats’ commercials came off looking like a Republican JFK (without the booze and women).

They saw a party determined to display diversity and showcase female leadership in the face of Democratic allegations of a GOP “war on women” and efforts to portray Obama opponents as racist. They saw Measured Mitt’s new partner, Ryan the Reformer. U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s speech was the AC/DC to Romney’s elevator music.

The media fact-checkers may have peppered it with buckshot, but conservative Republicans ate it up like it was the last chicken wing at a free buffet.

This week, voters will hear Barack Obama’s response. They’ll hear speaker after speaker rebuking the rhetorical excesses from Tampa and sowing doubts and fears about the prospect of a Romney administration. Obama will have his chance to use his personal popularity and appealing family to revive his record, calm economic fears and spark new optimism. We’ll likely see a parade of Democratic business owners and rich celebrities ready to swear they don’t need tax cuts.

At the end of it all, voters will have seen the long version of the competing messages they’ve already been hearing in shorthand for months. Then, they can see how well those messages hold up when the candidates have to stand next to each other in the debates and defend them.

Then, we’ll see which messages can hold air and which shred like confetti.